Aus. Climate Meet A Closed Shop - No Science, Environmental Participants

[hatrack]

SYDNEY, Jan 10 (Reuters) - A major climate change conference in Sydney this week will achieve little, say green groups, because the gathering of many of the biggest polluting nations is set to ignore renewable energy in preference to coal and oil. The United States, Japan, China, India, Australia and South Korea, and some of the world's biggest resource and power companies, will meet on Wednesday and Thursday at the first Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate.

But no green groups or scientific organisations have been invited to the talks. International environmental group Greenpeace has labelled the meeting a "coal pact" dominated by coal exporting and importing nations and producers. "The meeting's agenda leaves no room for scientific evaluation of the best energy technology policies to reduce greenhouse pollution," Greenpeace clean energy campaigner Catherine Fitzpatrick said on Tuesday. Green groups said the Sydney climate conference should focus on renewable energy such as solar, wave and wind power and not on existing polluting technologies or technologies that still do not exist except on the drawing board.

Hundreds of green activists are expected to stage protests outside the conference, where business chiefs from firms such as the United States' Rio Tinto, Exxon Mobil Corp and Peabody Energy Corp and Japan's Nippon Steel Corp meet on Wednesday. Energy and environment ministers meet on Thursday. But the conference is a closed meeting, with host nation Australia not releasing an agenda, and the lack of transparency has raised criticism that little will be achieved. Australia and the United States say the meeting is a new co-operative between governments and businesses to reduce global pollution through cleaner technology.

Perhaps, but environmental economist Jack Pezzey said the meeting appeared to be a "closed shop" to new energy technology. "The conference gives every impression of having been put together to favour particular energy and business industries in Australia and America," Pezzey, of the Australian National University in Canberra, told Reuters.

EDIT

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SYD202541.htm

[Wilms]

1. .

:grr:

[Odin2005]

2. What a joke.

"Clean Coal" is the most rediculous oxymoron ever invented. These people make me sick.